About half a week ago, I became self aware of my state as a piece of shit regarding the animal populations of Earth and their wellbeing. It was sparked by a video of animal abuse I saw online that I refuse to describe beyond serial-killer-level psychological torture to a poor, defenseless being.
I realize, there’s a set, and a mic, and props. This ain’t the first time, this has fucking followers and people will mimic it. We’re this shit as a species?! Where is the bottom? Is there one?!
I generally consider myself a fairly strong willed person, and my former diet wasn’t too dissimilar from dishes I could make vegan, so, I figure, why not? I saw Blue Planet 3. I know we’re fucking up. I had a few holdout food items but, pizza is my favorite food, and I believe replicating it will be fun. There’s apparently a few vegan roux recipes with some ways to mimic cheese flavor for mac and cheese. I’m into it.
Anyway, do share any tips with me that you wish you’d known when you started out. What’s a good brownie recipe?
Congratulations!
My two best tips are:
If you remove non-vegan ingredients from non-vegan recipes without adding anything else, or substitute vegan meat/cheese/dairy for the real thing, you’ll always think something’s off because it’s never going to be exactly the same. And meat substitutes that are highly processed to try and match the texture and flavor of meat are as bad for you as highly processed anything else.
So my recommendation is: practice cooking recipes that are naturally vegan. There are a lot of vegan dishes in Indian and Chinese cuisine, for instance. There are old recipes from before factory farming when meat was for special occasions instead of every day.
Pizza is flatbread with sauce and toppings, and there are a ton of naturally vegan flatbread recipes. Experiment. Go wild. I’m not telling you not to try vegan cheese, but also try pizza dough with (eg) pesto, shallots, and four different kinds of mushrooms, and see how that goes 🍕 🍕
My second tip is: forgive yourself if you slip.
Food is an addiction. And I mean this quite literally. Fat is psychologically addictive, sugar is psychologically addictive, meat is psychologically addictive. Millions of people in the West don’t feel a meal is complete without a meat dish - by which I mean they literally don’t feel full unless they know they ate meat. I was one of them. It took months before I could finish a vegan meal and not still feel hungry after.
Doing the right thing is hard when the world wants you to do the wrong thing and your body agrees with it.
So if you have cravings you can’t beat and go buy a pizza - forgive yourself and promise yourself to do better tomorrow.
I agree with your general message (The best substitute is no substitute), but “highly processed” is a really misleading term. Vegan meat substitutes are still fairly healthy compared to actual meat. The reason most ‘processed food’ is bad for you is because it’s nutritionally poor, and has high salt, sugar, preservatives, artificial dyes, etc.
As a side note: while vegan cheese is not very good, I think oat milk is significantly better than cow’s milk.
I agree, although that’s more a function of how unhealthy meat is than how healthy meat substitutes are.
And I think there’s a significant difference between traditional meat substitutes, like tofu and wheat gluten, and modern meat substitutes like impossible burgers, with high levels of sodium and saturated fat and chemical binders and industrial processing and so on.